The Linius Technologies Ltd (ASX: LNU) share price is having a top day today. Linius shares are trading at 7.4 cents a share at the time of writing, up 29.82% today.
The Linius share price closed at 5.7 cents yesterday and opened at 5.8 cents this morning, before shooting past the 7.5 cent market shortly after lunchtime for a brief period. At the current share price, this company has a market capitalisation of ~$110 million.
So what is Linius Technologies? And why is this company's share price going bananas today?
What is Linius Tech?
Linius Technologies is in the business of writing video editing software. The company tells us that it has "cracked the code that makes hyper-personalised video possible". It was founded back in 2011, and (unfortunately for shareholders), has never quite reached its initial public offering (IPO) price of 20 cents since.
The company's stated purpose is "transforming cumbersome, static video files into dynamic virtual files that can be easily manipulated on-the-fly, delivering an enhanced, custom experience for content creators, distributors and consumers".
Linius sees itself as a disrupter of "multi-billion-dollar markets" with its video technology. It is seeking to commercialise this technology across 6 "core markets", which are:
- News & Media,
- Sports Broadcasters & Rights Holders
- Education
- Corporate Communications
- Security & Defense
- Sports Betting
The company aims to do this through 2 primary product offerings: a Video Search Solution powered by the patented Video Virtualisation Engine; and a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, Linius Video Services.
The Video Search Solution reportedly helps users instantly search for any object, across any number of video sources, and instantly play back the content that matches the search results. It also can "automatically push search results into existing workflows", as well as deliver "an infinite number of streams" to individuals in a tailored manner based on "existing consumption preferences or behaviour".
Linius sees these products as having specific use in the news media landscape, enabling "hyper-personalised news-as-a-service". With sports, it wants to "provide every viewer with a hyper-personalised video feed of the sporting moments that matter to them". It sees security and defense applications for the service as being able to "detect suspicious activities and intervene before an incident occurs".
Why is the Linius share price rocketing today?
The stellar performance of the Linius share price today appears to be heavily connected to an ASX announcement the company released to the markets this morning before open.
This announcement concerned the Whizzard product that Linius first announced on 25 November. Back then, the company revealed that Whizzard would be a "unique product". It promises to allow users to "immediately search, assemble and share video content from within recorded meetings".
It was announced that Whizzard would be immediately available to users of Zoom Video Comminications Inc's (NASDAQ: ZM) Zoom, Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Teams and Cisco Systems Inc's (NASDAQ: CSCO) Webex products. This combination represents 55% of the world's video conferencing market, according to Linius.
Amazon's magic touch
Importantly, Linius noted then that, "[Amazon.com Inc's (NASDAQ: AMZN)] Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts the WHIZZARD platform, underpins its AI services and is providing funding support for the product's marketing efforts".
This is important because the only update Linius gave to that announcement today was the following:
Linius is an AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner, and like other businesses within the APN, can unlock funding support for training, new product and solution development, and go-to-market activities.
Linius has been approved by AWS for funding support for the WHIZZARD go-to-market activities. Whilst Linius does not consider the level of funding itself as material, the collaboration and hosting of WHIZZARD on AWS is material as it demonstrates a deepening of Linius' relationship with AWS and opportunities for co-marketing of the WHIZZARD product suite.
So it appears that the market today is reacting to this "deepening" relationship that Linius has with Amazon. Amazon is a highly popular company for investors around the world due to its breathtaking growth over the past 2 decades, which has seen it grow into a US$1.58 trillion company today.
